Broadcasters called for the FCC to “delete” nearly every reporting and filing obligation the agency imposes on them in scores of comments posted in docket 25-133 Monday, but the agency should roll back ownership rules first, NAB said. Multichannel video programming distribution (MVPD) interests and allies repeatedly argued that the highly competitive video distribution marketplace necessitates doing away with rules they claim tip the competitive scales. The docket also received many comments from space interests and the telecom industry (see 2504140037 and 2504140046).
Major providers discussed what they saw as the key technical rules for the upcoming AWS-3 auction in comments on a March public notice on its bidding procedures. Initial comments are already in on a separate NPRM looking more generally at changes to auction rules (see 2504010055). Replies on the NPRM are due next week. The auction will offer licenses that affiliates of Dish Network returned to the FCC in 2023, as well as unsold licenses from the initial AWS-3 auction 10 years ago.
The National Weather Service (NWS) warned the FCC that changing wireless emergency alert (WEA) rules to reduce alert fatigue and opt-outs won’t be easy given the nature of WEAs. “The problem is that there is no way to suppress WEA attention getting signals (audible or vibration cadence) when the WEA recipient was already presented with attention getting signals in the original alert or a previous alert update,” the NWA said this week in docket 15-91. “This is a problem for the NWS and will be exacerbated as alert originator capabilities advance.”
Communications Daily is tracking the lawsuits below involving appeals of FCC actions.
The Senate Commerce Committee advanced NTIA administrator nominee Arielle Roth on a nearly party-line vote of 16-12 Wednesday, as expected (see 2504080059). Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania was the only Democrat to buck his party by supporting her move forward. Panel Democrats gave Republican FCC nominee Olivia Trusty a more positive reception during her Wednesday confirmation hearing, even as they used some of their questions to hammer commission Chairman Brendan Carr’s actions since he took the gavel Jan. 20 and renew their concerns about the loss of agency independence during the Trump administration (see 2504090060).
The FCC Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau on Monday delayed for a year some of the requirements of the agency's February 2024 Telephone Consumer Protection Act consent order (see 2402160048). Originally set to take effect Friday, the requirements were delayed until April 11, 2026.
Sinclair promotes Christina Tesauro to senior vice president-sales, Tennis Channel, AMP Sports ... Global aerospace consultant AeroDynamic Advisory adds Liang Sim, ex-Blue Origin, and JJ Gertler, Defense Concepts Organization, as senior advisers.
The initial group of Amazon's Kuiper satellites is set for launch April 9 on a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket, Amazon said Wednesday. The 27 Kuipers will be deployed at an altitude of 450 kilometers, it added. Amazon expects to offer commercial satellite broadband service later this year, the company said, calling the 27 satellites "a significant upgrade" from the prototypes launched in 2023 (see 2310110007). Amazon said the satellites are coated in a mirror film that scatters reflected sunlight to make them less visible to ground-based astronomers. In the next several years, there are seven more Kuiper launches planned on Atlas V, along with 38 launches on ULA's larger Vulcan Centaur rocket and 30-plus launches by Arianespace, Blue Origin and SpaceX.
During the past 45 months, the number of unserved or underserved broadband-serviceable locations in South Carolina has dropped from more than 300,000 to 28,724, the South Carolina Broadband Office said Tuesday. Its $546.5 million BEAD allotment will address remaining unserved and underserved locations "and permanently solve the digital divide," it said. In the interim, it will use money from the state’s original $400 million American Rescue Plan Act funding to reduce the number of locations that will require BEAD funding.
A representative of the Open Technology Institute at New America warned an aide to FCC Chairman Brendan Carr against higher power limits and lower out-of-band emissions (OOBE) levels in the citizens broadband radio service band (see 2503130049), said a filing posted Wednesday. “With more than 400,000 base stations deployed by more than 1,000 operators for a wide variety of use cases, it would be fatally disruptive to accede to the demands of a small subset of users to raise power to a level that will inevitably increase interference and reduce channel availability for most other users, especially [general authorized access] users who have just recently built out the vast majority of [CBRS deployments] in reliance on the Commission’s rules,” Michael Calabrese said in the filing in docket 17-258. That is especially true for rural and small communities where hundreds of wireless ISPs “have relied on the Commission’s CBRS rules to invest in equipment sold by [original equipment manufacturers] such as Cambium Networks and Tarana Wireless to offer more affordable fixed wireless broadband services.”